bind configuration in RedHat 8.0

I'm trying to set up bind to serve rationalromance.com. I've registered the name servers dns1.rationalromance.com [65.219.63.17] and dns2.rationalromance.com [65.219.63.18], and set them as name servers for rationalromance.com. The /etc/named.conf file contains this (among others):

@ IN SOA dns1.rationalromance.com. mail.rationalromance.com. ( [numbers snipped]
IN NS dns1.rationalromance.com.
IN NS dns2.rationalromance.com.
www IN A 65.219.63.17
dns1 IN A 65.219.63.17
dns2 IN A 65.219.63.18

I've restarted the server since making changes. http://checkdns.net says "Tried to fetch SOA record for domain, but DNS server dns1.rationalromance.com [65.219.63.17] returned error code Server Failure." From the material I've been looking over for the past several days, I don't see what I'm missing. I would very much appreciate some help.

Aside: I haven't been able to discover whether the /var/named/65.219.63.rev.db file is necessary in order for rationalromance.com to be resolved successfully, but I'm guessing that it's not, which is why I haven't said anything about it. What functionality is lost if the /var/named/65.219.63.rev.db file is misconfigured? In case it's needed, this is what it contains:

Either post links to the actual master files, or allow TCP DNS requests so that I can get a look at what is returned in a zone transfer. I'm too busy to give a full analysis without one of those 2 conveniences.